Continuing Resolutions 101 or "Where's the Budget, Harry?"

Somebody has to write this…

Continuing Resolutions, Debt Ceilings, government shutdowns, ObamaCare, Affordable Care…what’s it all about?

The media won’t say it so I have appointed myself to try to make a little sense out of it. The media likes to keep us in the dark and feed us bull…well, you know…treat us like a mushrooms and think we should just shut up and believe anything they tell us. So, what’s all the fuss about passing a Continuous Resolution and why is the government shut down over it? And are the Republicans to blame as the Mindless Media keeps telling us?

Seriously, I have asked intelligent individuals working in a high-tech environment if they know what the CR is and they admitted they didn’t. One colleague said he knows that all the Senate wanted was a clean CR but the Republicans would not give it to them. In the end, he wasn’t sure what a CR was and other than needing it to fund the government did not know why we needed it.

Someone complaining about the situation said it was the job of the Congress to pass a budget and fund the government…Oh, wait…there’s the magic word that everybody seems to have missed – budget.

The Congress, by law, is supposed to pass a budget to fund the government each year. Do we have a budget? No. The Senate has not passed a budget in five years. Now, pay attention…for two years after Obama was elected the Democrats controlled the White House, the Senate, and the House of Representatives, but did not pass a budget. One year, Mr. Obama proposed a budget and the Senate rejected it 100 – 0 with a Democrat majority. The House of Representatives has passed budgets only to have Harry Reid refuse to bring them to a vote in the Senate.

A budget delineates the spending that will take place throughout the fiscal year. The only reason one would need a Continuing Resolution is because there is no budget so no authority to spend money. With no budget to “budget” money for spending the fallback is to pass a resolution for temporary funding. So, why don’t we have a government that is up and running with the required monies? Because the Democrats have neglected to fund the government via a budget for five years. The government is thus relegated to exist from resolution to resolution and that's a problem; all because the Democrats have refused to pass a budget - for five years!

Point Two: This whole idea about “all the Senate wants” – Actually, “all Harry Reid wants” because a full third of the Democrats in the House have voted with the Republicans there to pass partial funding to keep critical parts of the government running but Mr. Reid has refused them. So, this “all the Senate wants is a clean CR” is B.S., plain and simple. Nothing gets out of the House or Senate clean. There is always something hanging on that was added to get votes needed to pass bills through the Congress. That’s how they operate…that’s how they negotiate…”You give me this and I’ll vote for that.”

Finally – Point Three: - It's being said, ObamaCare, or the (UN)Affordable Care Act, was legally passed and the Supreme Court has supported it so why are the Republicans holding the country hostage by refusing to fund the government unless this legally passed law is defunded? Passed, btw, with not one Republican vote in the House or the Senate – that’s called partisan politics. ObamaCare has been changed multiple times already since it was passed so what is the problem with making more changes for the good? In fact, most recently, on top of all the exceptions to ObamaCare that he has given by executive order since the law was passed, Mr. Obama agreed to give employers an additional year to implement ObamaCare. Additionally, there have been fully 1200 exemptions to ObamaCare handed out to “Friends and Family” of the Democrats – large unions, large corporations, the Senate, the House of Representatives, the staffs of our Congressmen and Congresswomen, etc. The regular American people may be the only ones not exempted from ObamaCare. Why is that?

So, what exactly is it the Republicans are asking for? Well, for one, while the Republicans continue to try to negotiate funding for the government in whole, they have attempted to pass funding for critical parts of the government (supported by 1/3rd of the Democrats in the House) – the military, National Health Institute, etc., but the Senate in the person of Harry Reid has refused to bring these items up for a vote.

Harry Reid was asked by reporter Dana Bash why he refused to call for a vote in the Senate of a funding bill to bring the National Health Institute back on line. Reid said he was opposed to funding parts of government in a “pick and choose” method. Bash said, “But if you can help one child who has cancer, why wouldn’t you do it?” Reid replied “Why would we want to do that? I have 1,100 people at Nellis Air Force base that are sitting home. They have a few problems of their own – to have someone of your intelligence to suggest such a thing maybe means you are irresponsible and reckless…”

While I am in complete sympathy with those out of work federal employees , and I’m sure some of them are under hardships, do we really want to say we will not help kids with cancer if we can’t put everybody back to work? That is just reckless but nobody is talking about that. Who’s the bad guy here?

Here’s the bottom line, very few if any funding bills go through Congress without many appendages added on so, what’s different here? While the Republicans made a mistake originally attempting to defund ObamaCare altogether, they have rightly recognized that mistake and have backed off the defunding requirement. The main concern now is that what is good for one is good for all. If you and I have to have ObamaCare, a terrible idea by all reasonable arguments, then so should the President, the Congress, Congressional staffs, big unions, and big corporations. What is good for one is good for all – after all, that is the American way, right? No more royalty with special privileges; we got rid of that when we fought and won the Revolutionary War.

The Affordable Care Act has been changed multiple times by Mr. Obama himself to give special exemptions to his friends and to give corporations an extra year to implement it so the only fair thing would be to change it one more time and remove the exemptions so all are treated equally under the law and if a year extension is granted to corporations before implementation is required than all should be exempt for another year so we can work out the problems.

Mr. Reid, put the funding resolutions to a vote. No more special treatment, we have had enough.

If you disagree with me and anything I’ve written, I’d welcome your proof as to where I’m wrong. If you want to debate it, let’s have at it.